Category Archives: Podcast

Always try to find the cause of agitation and talk the patient down if possible.

Call for security or police early. Better to over-call than under-call.

Sometimes it is good just to step back and wait. Sometimes you need to intervene early before things escalate further.

You have a responsibility to restrain / sedate unwell or injured patients who may be a risk to themselves or others.

Ketamine is a great sedative but it is not generally accepted for behaviour control yet, especially by unsupervised junior doctors. If you are in a small hospital with no seniors on site – phone a senior for advice, if time allows. Once you have given someone ketamine you are committed to finding the cause of the agitation and to keeping them sedated, usually overnight, until the precipitant has worn off. You don’t want them waking up from a bad ketamine trip on your shift.

Haloperidol is a good sedative and doesn’t cause airway or respiratory depression. This is particularly useful when the patient has a large quantity of airway depressant on board eg alcohol ie most aggressive people in Australasian EDs

Benzodiazepines are good sedatives but may cause loss of airway control and respiratory depression especially for patients with lots of alcohol onboard. Benzodiazepines are the drug of choice for alcohol withdrawal and for agitation due to stimulants such as methamphetamine.

Often we use haloperidol and midazolam – probably without good reason

If you need to take a patient down get as many people to help as possible – preferably 5 + one ready with sedative medication. Failing that a rugby tackle may work.

Don’t restrain patients face down – they may suffocate.

If you have given the patient lots of sedative put them in the recovery position and monitor their oxygen saturation continuously. They will need one-on-one nursing until you are happy the patient can safely maintain their own airway.

If using physical restraints (eg leather wrist and ankle straps) use chemical sedation as well to ensure the patient isn’t straining against the restraints (which could make them more agitated and may rarely lead to rhabdomyolysis). In many hospitals use of physical restraint needs to be recorded on particular forms and obs documented regularly.

It is acceptable to leave physical restraints on a patient overnight if you consider them to be high risk.

RSI is not good for first line behaviour control. Sedate the person then, if needed to a “delayed sequence intubation” or DSI

Sometimes we have to restrain and sedate the crap out of aggressive patients.

In some hospitals we have little or no security assistance and doctors will be expected to take control of an aggressive patient.

The question is often asked: can we sedate or restrain a patient against there will if they don’t have a psychiatric problem? The answer is usually yes.

If you believe the patient may have a medical problem that’s putting themselves or others at risk, be it intoxication, head injury, sepsis, hypoxia or psychiatric disorder, you have a responsibility, also called a “duty of care”, to do what is needed to keep the patient and/or others safe.

If they are bad rather than sick or mad, you need to get police or security to deal with them. If in doubt assume the patient is unwell.

The cases

Case One

A gang member in his 50s, 160kg of lard and muscle, was in ICU on BiPAP for an exacerabation of COPD. I was called into help at 6am. He was in the ED waiting room when I arrived. We tried reasoning with him to no avail. He was mildly agitated and sick of being in hospital. The police sent one 60kg unarmed officer to help.

Another gang member arrived to collect the and we elected to allow him to leave – for our safety and so as not to inflame the situation. We asked the associate to try and convince the patient to return.

The patient and associate returned 20 minutes later as the patient had become more short of breath. He tolerated BiPAP and an IV line and we transferred him to ICU.

He was seen by the duty anaesthetist who wanted to place an arterial line but quickly backed off when the patient became stroppy.

He was given a small prophylactic dose of 3mg haloperidol. A short time later he became agitated again, ripped off his BiPAP and was thrashing around and being quite scary. His associate tried to calm him down. We kept our distance and waited.

About 30 minutes later the patient was asleep or unconscious. I snuck into his room and gave him a massive dose of IV ketamine. I would normally give a patient 1mg/kg of IV ketamine to completely flatten them. I gave this 400mg of ketamine. I wanted to be sure he was dissociated quickly and completely. He quickly woke up and looked like a sterotypical zombie: arms stretched out in front of him staring into space and looking confused. We were able to get the BiPAP on him. 5 minutes later he was still moving. I gave him another 200mg of IV ketamine and started a ketamine infusion at 200mg an hour, 5 mg IV haloperidol. He settled briefly. 5 minutes later he was getting agitated again and I gave him 5mg of midazolam. Then he finally stopped moving and tolerated the BiPAP

We converted him slowly to fentanyl for sedation. Fentanyl and/or propofol are probably the best medium term sedatives once you have the patient under control. There is less chance the patient will wake up delerious than with ketamine or even benzodiazepines.

The patient needed to be heavily sedated for behaviour control and probably needed to be intubated as he was going to need ventilatory support for days. The patient was in ICU so I needed to run this past an anaesthetist. I spoke to the anaesthetist who had seen the patient earlier who suggested we needed to wake the patient up and have that discussion with the patient. I invited him to have that discussion with the patient and went home to bed.

When I arrived for my shift a few hours later the patient was intubated.

I saw the pateint a few days later. He recognised me, thanked me for caring for him. He had no recollection of a bad ketamine trip.

Bottom line: some patients need massive doses of anaesthetics and sedatives to control their agitation so they can be safely managed. For patients like this get senior help early.

Case Two

Later that day a man in his late 20s was brought in by ambulance and police, drunk after putting his arm through a window. His father said the patient had only used alcohol. The patient was handcuffed, agitated and abusive and bleeding quite a bit from a forearm laceration. A CAT tourniquet was applied. The patient was given 10mg IM haloperidol and 5mg IM midazolam with little effect. 10 minutes later he was given another 10mg IM haloperidol and settled. He was kept on oximetry without supplemental oxygen. He was restrained with leather wrist and ankle restraints. IV access was obtained and further boluses of 10mg haloperidol or 2.5 midazolam were given as required. A nasophyaryngeal airway was inserted. His wound was loosely sutured then dressed to control the bleeding. He was kept sedated and restrained overnight and then taken to theatre for definitive management the next day.

Case two could have been controlled with ketamine but I think it would have been overkill. Case one needed to be immobilised completely, very quickly. Partial sedation may have left him still able to inflict serious harm to staff. I wanted an agent that worked quickly, totally immobilised him but wouldn’t stop him breathing. Ketamine was ideal.

Case Three

A chap in his late 30s was in ICU with a delirium of unknown cause: toxicology screen, CT, LP, bloods were normal. Formal toxicology and a brain MRI was pending. He heard someone talking about the psychiatric unit and thought he was going to be sent there and went ballistic. He hit 3 staff, made many holes in the walls and smashed a window with a drip pole. Luckily the was a visitor in the unit his 50s who had been a rugby player in his younger days. He did what was reported as a stunning tackle on the patient.

A bit like this one by one of my daughter’s friends:

I arrived a minute later. The patient was being restrained by the visitor and a couple a male nurse. The patient still had an IV line in place. He was given 10mg of IV haloperidol, 5mg of IV midazolam which settled him well. He was bound with leather restraints and charted PRN haloperidol and midazolam and a security guard was assigned to watch him.

Case Four

A 93-year-old was in an orthopaedic ward post hip replacement. He was delirious and whacking everything and everybody in site with his crutches.

We formed a 5 person team. A sixth person was standing by with 3mg of IM haloperidol. I was at the point of the chevron shaped formation, armed with a pillow to take the blows from the crutches. The person on my left and right were assigned to an upper limb each, the people behind them were assigned to a lower limb each. We heroically over powered the old gentleman and lowered him onto his bed. The people on upper limbs grab a shoulder and a wrist. The people on lower limbs hold a knee and ankle. People are best held down on their backs as they have less purchase. Avoid face down due to risk of suffocation. If the patient is given lots of chemical sedatives it is best to have the patient in the recovery position if possible. The lead person quickly changes position and restrains the head to prevent biting.

We then did a thorough assessment to see if there was a cause for his agitation: hypoxia, fever, fluid overload inadequate analgesia, excess analgesia, full bladder. Often it is just post operative delirium.

Although not widely available, droperidol is often used for the management of agitated delirium. This paper compares droperidol (10mg IM) in 118 patients vs. haloperidol (10mg IM) in 100 patients. Appropriate sedation within 120 seconds occurred in 92% of patients without differences between agents. While sedation with droperidol required less rescue doses, it also had higher adverse events (5% vs 1%).” [emphasis mine]

Meningococcal infections are something we don’t see often but we need to know about. There was an outbreak in Suva, Fiji while I was there.

They may present with meningococcal sepsis, meningitis or both. They may or may not have a rash. They may or may not have neck stiffness. They may or may not look sick.

When I was a young doc I almost sent a child home because who had a fever and purpura, but had no neck stiffness and was walking around looking fine. Luckily the paediatrician I consulted decided to come in and see the child himself.

Papura can be easy to miss, especially in dark-skinned people: looks at the palms and soles for pupura and look at the conjunctivae and in the mouth, especially on the soft palate, for petechiae.

I treated one of the Suva patients myself. She was a 22-year-old student from Vanuatu who had mild fever and myalgias the day before. On the day of presentation she was found confused and hot and brought to hospital. Her temperature was 38.5, HR 130, no palpable pulse, no BP, no sats reading, her neck was rigid and she had widespread purpura – but this was missed by a good local doctor. She was alert but confused. She did not vocalise or responding to questions.

She was given IV penicillin while we waited for ceftriaxone to arrive from pharmacy (consultant order required!). Cefotaxime is the empiric therapy in some centres. Neonates required different antibiotics (eg amoxycillin and cefotaxime) to cover maternal vaginal flora and those over 50 usually have ampicillin or amoxycillin added to cover Listeria. Where there is a high incidence of penicillin resistant penumococcus vancomycin is usually added to the empiric antibiotics.

After 2L of IV fluid the local doc ultrasounded her: her IVC was not changing with respiration but her cardiac contractility was reduced. He used M mode of the anterior leaflet of the mitral valve, see for example http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ccrp/2012/503254/ Minimum distance between the tip of the anterior leaflet of the mitral valve and the septum < 7mm represents good contractility, > 1cm shows poor contractility. She was started on an adrenaline (1mg in 1L of saline, running freely) while a noradrenaline infusion was prepared. The noradrenaline quickly went up to 20mcg/minutes but the adrenaline wasn’t slowed for several hours.

She was also given intravenous steroids. Hydrocortisone 50mg. Starship Children’s Hospital recommends Dexamethasone 0.15 mg / kg 6 hourly for 2 days for children with presumed bacterial meningitis.

After about 4.5L of fluid she became tachypnoic and agitated – I thought we were going to have to ventilate – but there was no ventilator in ICU and no ventilator in ED and no ketamine. Fluids were slowed right down and luckily she settled.

Some would argue that once we saw her IVC was full we should of stopped the IV fluids and just used pressors, thus reducing the risks of volume overload such as ARDS.

A central line was placed.

Within 3 hours of arrival she was sitting up talking and saying thank you.

She was transferred to ICU.

She was transferred out of ICU approximately 24 hours after her arrival in hospital with no sequelae.

Last I heard there were 3 other meningococcal cases in the 6 bed ICU.

Here is some photos from one of them courtesy of Dr Krisneel Krishna

Typically this is a disease of the young – preschoolers and young adults, but my mother-in-law had it in her 60s. She was found confused at home, and had no fever, no rash.

In New Zealand we do blood cultures and meningococcal PCR to confirm the diagnosis. LP in this setting is controversial. There is little utility to doing a lumbar puncture and there are concerns that the patient could “cone” if they have raised ICP from the meningitis. Starship Children’s Hospital says that an LP is contraindicated in a child with meningitis who is “sick or has a rapidly evolving rash” or “haemodynamically unstable” or “GCS < 13″.

CSF can be sterilised within an hour of giving IV antibiotics, so by the time your patient has had their CT to rule out raised ICP it is not that useful to do a LP. Administration of antibiotics should not be delayed till after the LP.

Any known intracranial disease that is not an absolute contraindication

Traumatic or prolonged (>10 min) cardiopulmonary resuscitation

Major surgery within the preceding three weeks

Internal bleeding within the preceding two to four weeks or an active peptic ulcer

Noncompressible vascular punctures

Pregnancy

Current warfarin therapy – the risk of bleeding increases as the INR increases

For streptokinase or anistreplase – a prior exposure (more than five days previously) or allergic reaction to these drugs

So key screening questions to ask your patient: Are you prone to excessive bleeding, have you ever had anything unusual happen to your brain like a stroke or head injury, does your pain radiate to your back, is it tearing, was it most severe at onset, have you been in hospital in the last 3 months, what medications are you on, could you be pregnant?

Treatment Agreement

Benefit: one life saved for every 43 people treated within 6 hours of onset of pain (there are likely to be more who have no or reduced heart failure or angina due to treatment).

Harm: One in 250 recipients will have a haemorrhagic stroke – usually fatal. 2 of the patients I have thrombolysed have bled into their brains and died. It isn’t pleasant. There is also risk of other serious bleeding. If the patient has any of the relative contraindications their risk of bleeding may be highter.

Thrombolysis

We usually use tenectoplase. Some recommend streptokinase for the elderly as it is associated with a lower rate of intracranial bleeding.

For tenectoplase:

Inject the 10 ml of water from the syringe into the bottle with the powder then mix.

Tip the bottle and syringe upside down and draw out the required volume of the mixture. The weight-adjusted dose is on the syringe. Our patient was over 90kg so he got the full 10ml = 50mg.

Weight (kg)

tenecteplase (IU)

tenecteplase (mg)

Volume of reconstituted solution (mL)

< 60

6,000

30

6

60 to < 70

7,000

35

7

70 to < 80

8,000

40

8

80 to < 90

9,000

45

9

90 and up

10,000

50

10

Give it as an IV push over 5 seconds

Other treatments

Give aspirin and clopidogrel if not already given. Dose of clopidogrel with thrombolysis is controversial. We currently use 300mg.

Give 30mg IV enoxaparin (omit if > 75 years old or known GFR < 30). Then 1mg/kg SC enoxaparin (0.75mg/kg if patient over 75, max 75mg).

Then we gave him small boluses of fentanyl. I’m a little cautious with the opioids with inferior ventricular infarcts. They might have right ventricular infartion as well (see below). I don’t want to venodilate the patient too much. That would decrease his right ventricular preload and therefore his left ventricular preload.

After 40mcg of fentanyl he was painfree and back to a normal colour. About 15 minutes post tenectoplase his inferior ST elevation had reduced to ~ 1mm.

Treatment Failure

If his pain persisted and 60-90 minutes post tenectoplase his ST elevation was still > half of what it had been at its largest this would count as failed thrombolysis. Patients with failed thrombolysis are candidates for urgent transfer for PCI. Some argue that all STEMIs in peripheral hospitals should be thrombolysed and flown urgently to a PCI capable centre so that they can receive PCI if thrombolysis fails. This is not the practice in our region.

Door to Needle Time

I was a little disappointed our door to needle time was 5 minutes. We can do better, eg we could have had the tenectoplase at the bedside before the patient arrived.

Supplementary ECGs

For interest, after thrombolysis, we also did a right-sided and posterior ECG.

Procedural anaesthesia is providing IV anaesthesia to allow a painful procedure to be performed. Very rarely it will be performed to rapidly control dangerous behaviour.

It has also been called conscious sedation or procedural sedation but usually we don’t want our patient to be conscious and we want them to be anaesthetised, not just sedated. These terms are largely hangovers from the past when we had to pretend we weren’t really doing anaesthesia in ED.

We don’t usually count giving up to 70% nitrous oxide within the realms of procedural anaesthesia as there is very low risk of loss of airway with just nitrous oxide.

Generally the procedure is very similar to performing a rapid sequence intubation (RSI) just smaller doses of drugs are used, we don’t use paralytics and we don’t stick a tube in the trachea. Otherwise the set up and monitoring is very similar. This is a bit of over kill for procedural anaesthesia, but it ensures you have all the equipment, staff and drugs you need if anything goes wrong, and it’s good practice for the set up for RSIs so it keeps the team slick. You can even use the first part of your RSI check list to set up for procedural anaesthesia, modifying it as required.

This will make sure you remember all the equipment and steps and will keep everyone familiar with your RSI checklist.

Written Treatment Agreement

Unless this is an emergency procedure eg unstable tachyarrhythmia, procedural anaesthesia requires a written treatment agreement or treatment request form (commonly know as a Consent Form).

You need to disuss and document the risks and benefits of the procedure and the anaesthesia. Risk of anaesthesia are: experiencing of pain, nausea, vomiting, inhaling vomit, confusion, hallucinations (depending on the agent used), allergic reaction to drugs, stopping breathing. With any anaesthesia there is a tiny chance of death. The benefits of anaesthesia is that it usually a pleasant, pain free experience with no recollection of the painful procedure.

You may want to make a pre printed treatment agreement form with all of the above alreay on it.

Place

Any bay with suction, oxygen and monitoring could be used. In our hospital we use a resus bay as has all the gear in it already, and again it helps with team familiarisation with RSI procedures.

Team

Generally we like to have at least 3 staff for procedural anaesthesia. An appropriately qualified doc to perform the anaesthesia and watch the patient. A nurse as super can do everything person, helping with preparation, advocating for the patient and monitoring the patient. They can help with the procedure being performed while keeping an eye on the patient. The third staff member is usually a doctor performing the procedure itself. You will need to check what your institutions rules are regarding how many staff are required and what the skill level required is. Generally the doctor performing the anaesthesia will be senior ED registrar (resident) level or above. ACEP allows just 2 staff members to be present, it does not require that 2 doctors are present.

If a consultant is performing the anaesthesia they may briefly help with the procedure while still closely watching the patient.

Medication

The choices of medication(s) varies with every consultant and often will vary depending on the patient and procedure. Ask the team leader what they want.

For procedural anaesthesia we are aiming for that sweet spot where the patient is maintaining their airway, breathing spontaneously has a good cardiac output yet has no or minimal experiece of pain.

All medications need to be double checked and labeled (prefilled, prelabeled syringes of medication are ideal) and placed tidally in a tray.

Medication is administered by the doctor performing anaesthesia or by a nurse following the doctor’s direct instruction.

Some docs will push the whole predicted dose of anaesthetic, others prefer to titrate slowly eg asking patients to keep their eyes open or to hold one arm up in the air and stopping drug administration when the eyes close or the arm drops. I prefer to push the predicted dose. Generally we will have more than the predicted dose drawn up in the syringe to allow for top up doses. Doctor’s must make themselves aware of what is in the syringe. We have had 2 episodes of doctors getting over excited and just pushing a whole syringe of the white stuff thinking the syringe contained the predicted dose only.

Propofol

Also known as Jackson Juice. For a very brief procedure eg cardioversion, shoulder or hip relocation, often just propofol will be used. eg 1mg/kg for a young person, down to 20mg for a 90 year old.

Propofol and Ketamine

For longer or very painful procedures often a combination of ketamine and propofol are used. This may be in a fixed mg:mg ratio (know as ketafol) or titrated separately.

These drugs work well synergistically. Propofol gives good anaesthesia and is antiemetic, it’s down side is that it can cause loss of airway reflexes, hypoventilation and hypotension. Ketamine is very analgesic and dissociative anaesthetic usually with maintained airway, breathing and circulation but can cause unpleasant hallucinations and nausea and vomiting. The combination allows lower doses of each agent and they negate each others negative effects.

As always doses need to be reduced in the elderly. Good anaesthesia for cardioversion for an 89-year-old can be achieved with 20mg of ketamine and 20mg of propofol.

For a young person for a quite painful, longer procedure, eg MUA and plastering of a fracture, I will typically give 0.8 mg/kg of propofol and 0.8 mg/kg of ketamine. If further doses of anaesthetic are needed I will usually just give boluses of propofol alone eg 0.2mg/kg, rather than giving further doses of ketamine to reduce recovery time and to reduce the adverse effects of ketamine. But every patient is different and you need to be flexible titrating against respirations and response to pain. It is reassuring that even when patients appear to be experiencing pain they only occassionally remember cardioversions but it seems they never remember the MUAs or I+Ds

I am not in favour of ketamine only anaesthesia. I have had too many patients, even ones who said as they woke up “Wow, that was amazing”, stop me in the supermarket a week later and say “Hey doc, that drug was awful.” One of our anaesthetists tells us of having ketamine only anaesthesia then spending the whole night hallucinating he was being repeatedly run over by cars. A tad unpleasant.

I do rarely use ketamine only anaesthesia for rapid control of dangerous (to themself or others) patients eg ketamine 5mg/kg IM.

Antiemetic

Especially when ketamine is used it is good to add an antiemetic eg ondansetron 4mg or 0.15mg/kg.

Other medications

There are many other drug cocktails used.

Patient

AMPLE history

Allergies (especially to anaesthetic medication)

Medications

Past medical history (yes, I know that is redundant) especially anaesthetic history, family history of anaesthetic problems, obesity and reflux

In my opinion this patient is not a candidate for ED procedural anaesthesia. I gave him 100µg IV fentanyl and 70% nitrous but we couldn’t get his shoulder relocated. He went upstairs. (Turned out an anaesthetist with large gonads just gave him a truck load of propofol and face mask ventilated him while a very good ortho reg struggled for 15 minutes to relocate it).

Obese patients are our nemisis. They occlude their airways at the drop of a hat, they are difficult to ventilate or intubate and they are high aspiration risks. Just don’t go there for procedural anaesthesia unless it is emergent eg haemodynamically unstable arrhythmia. Let someone else take that risk.

Last ate or drank, the patient does not need to be fasted according to ACEP, but we may modify things if we know he’s just had 10 beers.

Events: make sure you know the full story about this patient before you put them to sleep. Is that dislocated shoulder actually attached to a broken neck?

Airway exam

Feel the neck, identify the cricothyroid just in case it all turns to custard. Assess neck mobility and thyromental distance. We want4 of the patients fingers (guestimate with your own fingers) between the top of the thyoid cartilage and the bottom of the front of the mandible with the neck extended. Make sure the patient can protrude their lower teeth infront of their upper teeth and that the mouth opens wide (at least 3 of their fingers (again guestimate with yours if necessary), how much of the oropharynx can you see:

Is their anything on their face that would make them hard to ventilate with a BVM?

Positioning

If the patient is obese ramp them so their tragus is higher than their manubrial-sternal joint (blue line in the picture below)

If you are dealing with a lesion on the patient’s back put the patient on their side, not face down.

While you are positioning the patient refresh you memory regarding the bed controls: work out how to tip the patient head down if they vomit

IV Access

One good IV or IO line is enough for procedural anaesthesia. Make sure it is well secured.

Cautionary tale: beware the IV line in the foot. Some of my colleagues in a land big and red were anaesthetising an elderly patient for a cardioversion. They gave some propofol, then some more propofol, then some more. Eventually all the propofol made it to her heart and brain and she had a PEA arrest. They had the good sense to cardiovert her and give good CPR till the propofol wore off and she made a full recovery.

Some people have IV fluids running (which reassures us the IV line is working and can be used to flush drugs) others find this to be another tube that gets in the way and is probably unneccessary. Ask your team leader.

Equipment

It’s OCD overkill time.

Size and have out on top of the resus trolley (or under the pillow) all of your airway equipment:

Suction – tested

Bougie

Oropharyngeal airway

Nasopharyngeal airway

Supraglottic device (eg intubating LMA)

Scalpel (I always keep one in my pocket while at work too)

ETT

Stylet

Bag-Valve-Mask (BVM)

Capnography tubing (we don’t routinely use this in our hospital for procedural anaesthesia as the powers that be have decided the consumables are too expensive, but have it out and ready to be used)

Laryngoscopes – tested

On the patient:

Nasal prongs oxygen running at 2L a minute till they are asleep then crank it up to 15L/min.

Have a decent amount of chest and belly exposed so that you can watch the respirations.

Don’t panic if the patient stops breathing. With the above preparation they will be able to tolerate a long period of apnoea. If needed you can ask the doctor performing the procedure to inflict some pain or you can do a firm jaw thrust and the patient will usually start breathing again. If not grab your BVM and start ventilating. Use other airway adjuvants as needed. Nasopharyngeal airways are very well tolerated and will sort out most airway occlusions.

Recovery

The anaesthetic is not necessarily over when the procedure is finished. Especially if opioids or benzodiazepines are used this can be the most dangerous time for apnoeas – the pain has stopped but the drugs are still onboard.

The patient must have one-on-one observation until they are talking clearly. Once they are talking take the oxygen mask off just in case they vomit. Have a vomit bowl handy. Once the patient is talking they should be kept on monitoring (reduce the BP frequency to q 15 minutes) and watched by reliable family.

The patient is fit for discharge when they can walk independently (or the equivalent for their age and abilities).

Give them verbal and written advice not to drive or operate dangerous machinery until after a full nights sleep and to phone ED if they have any problems.

Whenever a patient you have just intubated deteriorates, or a patient on a ventilator deteriorates quickly:

DOTTS

Disconnect and let them exhale:

This gets the ventilator out of the equation and simplifies things / reduces our cognitive load: we understand BVMs (bag-valve-mask), ventilators and circuits confuse and scare us. It also stops ventilation for a few seconds and lets the patient exhale which will help with over inflation / breath stacking. This is especially important in patients with asthma (see Pop goes the wheezer)

O2 via BVM, slow:

Ventilate the patient slowly with a bag-valve-mask. Look at the chest movements, listen to the breath sounds.

Is only one side of the chest moving? Is it a bronchial intubation (check tube depth, see below), a mucus plug (suction the tube, see below) or a pneumothorax (usually unlikely, we’ll check for this later, see below, but if it’s a trauma patient ultrasound and/or perform a finger thoracostomy now)?

Squeezing the bag lets us get a feel for what is going on: is the patient easy or hard to ventilate. If the bag collapses easily but the chest doesn’t move the tube probably isn’t in the trachea or is disconnected from the bag. If it is hard to squeeze the bag: it might be a problem with the tube or the patient. In the above X-Ray the patient has a R main bronchus intubation with R lung hyperinflation and L lung collapse (which happens amazingly rapidly).

Tubes:

Is it in the ETT in right place, is it blocked, is there a big leak (tube too small or has the cuff deflated)? Check the capnography trace: Is there a good wave form? Is the tube at the right depth (around 22cm at the teeth for an adult or ~ 3 times tube diameter (actually 30 times), or black mark on ETT just through the cords in kids)?

Suction the tube. If the suction catheter goes right down, the tube is patent. You may suck out a big mucus plug or piece of broccoli.

Tubes is also for a nasogastric or orogastric tube. If you haven’t got one in get someone to put one in while you continue to trouble shoot, otherwise make sure that is working (aspirate stomach contents, or insufflate air and listen to it gurgle in the stomach.

In the above X-Ray the ETT is down the R main stem bronchus (it was at 19cm at the teeth in a 3 year old) and the NG tube is curled up in the upper airway and has not decompressed the stomach. Kids especially can be difficult to ventilate, be hypoxic or hypotensive due to gastric distension increasing intrathoracic pressure

Tweak the vent:

Do you need to reduce the tidal volume or respiratory rate if the patient has stiff lungs? We usually start with a tidal volume of 6ml/kg ideal body weight.

If the patient is ventilating OK but is still hypoxic you probably need to increase the PEEP.

Sonogram:

Ultrasound to look for pneumothorax. This is last because it is relatively rare.

Get a chest X-Ray as well, but hopefully you will have fixed the problem using the above mnemonic before the radiographer arrives.

If the above hasn’t worked (it will sort the problem 99% of the time) get senior help! (if you haven’t already)

People often mistake the normal anterior ST elevation of LBBB as an MI

Less frequently people miss significant concordant ST segment changes which may be a STEMI (by Sgarbossa Criteria)

The Law of Discordance or the Law of Appropriate Discordance

In a normal LBBB the ST segments should be isoelectric or go be in the opposite (discordant) direction from the dominant part of the QRS

So typically in V1 the QRS is mainly negative and the ST segment in elevated. This is normal for LBBB

In V6 the QRS is mainly positive and the ST segment is down. This is normal for LBBB

Modified Sgarbossa Criteria for diagnosing STEMI in the presence of a LBBB

If there is concordant ST changes (ST segments in the same direction as the dominant part of the QRS) or a discordant ST elevation of greater than 1/4 of the amplitude of the S wave.

A: Concordant STE ≥ 1mm (in any lead) = Most specific for MI

B: Concordant STD ≥ 1mm in V1, V2, or V3 = Specific for MI

C: Discordant STE > 0.25 R or S wave

So, for example the ECG below shows a concordant ST depression in V3 (circled). This only needs to be in a single lead. Therefore this meets Sgarbossa criteria for diagnosing a STEMI.

All of this applies to patients who have ventricular pacing as well (which usually causes a LBBB pattern on ECG)

This patient was not diagnosed as a STEMI, did not receive reperfusion therapy and died 9 hours later (but to keep this in perspective, in that hospital the patient would have had to be thrombolysed and there is only around a 1 in 43 chance that thrombolysis would save the average patients life even if given within 6 hours).

Most of us regard Sgarbossa as an indication for revascularisation (PCI or thrombolysis) because it has greater specificity for MI than standard STEMI criteria, but it is not in black and white as a criteria in the latest definition of MI.

If in Doubt

… get a second opinion. If you don’t have senior support (eg smaller hospitals overnight) email (or take a photo on your phone and text or email, or fax) the ECG to the relevant specialist then phone them to get their interpretation.

Key points

Stop bleeding!

Tourniquets are great.

Pack bleeding wounds firmly. A roll of gauze works well. “Haemostatic dressings” eg quik clot, don’t seem to make much difference. It appears the pack needs to be absorbent probably because they absorb water out of the blood in the wound thereby increasing the concentration of clotting factors.http://emtutorials.com/wp-admin/post-new.php

Don’t get hung up on big IV lines. The difference in flow rate between a 18 and 16 gauge is not that great. If the patient is bleeding out that fast they aint going to make it, and sometimes 18s are just easier to get in especially in a shocked patient.

Permissive hypotension: aim for a systolic of 80 (90 if head injury). Don’t rely on mental status (BP 60 systolic but compensating and still conscious… 60 and compensating still conscious …. 60 and still conscious … dead).

For massive haemorrhage transfuse and give tranexamic acid early. For us this may mean sending an “unknown patient” label down to get some O-negative blood from the lab before the patient arrives. Get FFP thawing ASAP. Get platelets ASAP.

Use ketamine rather than fentanyl in major trauma -> lives saved, presumably by avoiding the sympatholytic effects of fentanyl

Ketamine appears to reduce the incidence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by 60%! This may be by reducing the patients’ experience of pain and mutilation.

ED teams (in the military ED docs and nurses and military medics) resuscitate the patient, others behind the red line. When the external bleeding has been stopped and the patient resuscitated, then the anaesthetist and surgeon are invited to take the patient to theatre/operating room

Be prepared for the unexpected, logistical challenges, politics and politicians, strange infections, psychological stress, Aussie docs not recognising melioidosis and a mysterious man in a Hawaiian shirt … with a small fleet of Black Hawk helicopters.

You need to be flexible, creative and psychologically tough.

Military doctor Paul Nealis discusses disaster medicine in the context of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Sumatra.

Notify police, fire, public health, declare an emergency as appropriate.

Nothing or no one potentially contaminated enters cold zone. Must keep staff safe and hospital able to function.

Staff (eg nurse and health care assistant) in shower in PPE

Strip patients and wash them with detergent, sponge and lots of water. If possible bag up clothes with patient name, your name, date and time for police.

Clothes, towels, PPE go out to the hot zone for disposal/laundry/police , not into the cold zone.

If unable to mobilise take the patient through shower on the ambulance trolley. Wash the trolley. Be careful of patients airway as water collects on trolley. Patient and trolley through to resus – now considered clean.